by Richard Coble
Matthew 1:18-25
“This is a story, not just about things going wrong, but of catastrophe, according to the customs and expectations of the day. We must not downplay, then, the radicality of the angel’s words then in v. 20: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” In that pronouncement, through this incarnation, God breaks apart religious norms and household scripts; God makes a way where there was no way; God breathes life into death.
And yet this an aspect of the story easy to forget, because the church has sanitized this aspect of the incarnation. We have turned a deeply embodied, scandal of procreation into yet another abusive religious script. Today, belief in the virgin birth is a litmus test to prove one’s adherence to religious norms and creeds. You better believe it, and your church better proclaim it, or else you’re out of the club we call orthodoxy. What’s more, the theology of the virgin birth has been central to the way Christianity has stigmatized sexuality, setting Mary as the pinnacle of purity and chastity, against which others – and by others, I mean women and, really anyone other than heterosexual cisgendered white men – are judged, shamed and shunned in church and community.”
Watch the full GCPC service on 12/18/22 here
(Scripture and sermon begin at 43:40)